Weekly D'Var

THE SOUNDS OF THE SHOFAR
Al Madansky, z”l 
September-October 2006

In Numbers 29:1, when the Rosh Hashana holiday is introduced, it is referred to as yom teru’ah, which is translated as “a day when the horn is sounded,” But the word teru’ah does not literally mean “horn”; it is merely the name of one of the notes sounded on Rosh Hashana. In Leviticus 23:24 the day is referred to as zichron teru’ah (translated as “commemorated with loud blasts,” but literally meaning “remembrance of blasts.”) And in Numbers 10:10 it is written, “And on your joyous occasions – your fixed festivals and new moon days – you shall sound the trumpets (useka’atem ba’chatsotros).” So you see that it is another instrument, the chatsotsra (translated as “trumpet”), that appears to be the one commanded to be used on Rosh Hashana. 

The chatsotsros are introduced in Numbers 10:2 as the trumpets to summon the community. Two silver trumpets are to be constructed, and two sorts of blasts are described there, short blasts for alerting the community to move and long blasts to convene the community. The actual verse that differentiates the two kinds of trumpet blasts is Numbers 10:7, where the long blast is referred to by the verb tiskeu, whose root is the same as the noun tekiya, and the short blast is referred to by the verb tariyu, whose root is the same as the noun teru’ah. 

The word shofar appears in only one verse of the Torah (Leviticus 25:9), in the context of the Jubilee Year, where it is commanded to herald in that event on Yom Kippur with shofar teru’ah,  a shofar blast. 

So how did the shofar (translated as “horn”) come to be associated with Rosh Hashana? 

Both the horn (shofar) and the trumpet (chatsotsra) were used together as signals, as evidenced by the warning against an invading army issued in Hosea 5:8, “Blow ye the horn (shofar) in Gibeah and the trumpet (chatsotsra) in Ramah,“ probably with short blasts. They were also used together as a call to worship, as is evidenced by the phrase “with trumpets [chatsotsros] and the sound of the horn [shofar]”, probably with long blasts) from Psalms 98:6 used in our Kabbalat Shabat prayers. The trumpets were certainly around in the time of David, for in the 1 Chronicles 15:26 description of the ceremony when King David brought the ark of the covenant to Jerusalem, it was accompanied “with sound of the horn, and with trumpets, and with cymbals, sounding aloud with psalteries [zither-like instruments] and harps.” 

So what happened to the trumpets, and why does the shofar replace the trumpet in the Rosh Hashana service? The trumpets were to be sounded only by the priests, whereas nonpriests used the shofar. In his Excursus 21 on the trumpet and the shofar in the JPS Torah Commentary on Numbers, Professor Jacob Milgrom says, “it is likely that the non-priestly sources did not distinguish between the two instruments, calling both of them by the name shofar.” He says, in direct contradiction to the above quotes, that the rabbis posited that “the trumpet was only used during the time of Moses but not by Joshua and later generations,” citing Sifre Numbers 75 (written around 189 CE) as his source for that statement. Finally, he says, “Certainly by the time of the rabbis of the Gemara, the amoraim [3rd thru 5th century CE], the distinction between the shofar and trumpet was no longer known.” 

Using Talmudic logic, the juxtaposition of the word shofar with the word teru’ah in Leviticus 25:9, as well as their dual use in these quotations, leads to the inference that the sounds to be used on the shofar should be the same as those used on the chatsotsros, namely the long blast (tekiya) and the short blast (teru’ah). The long blast, the tekiya, was one continuous blast of the horn, ruled by the rabbis to be sustained for at least 3 seconds. But what constitutes a short blast? Rabbis differ on this. Some say it is the tekiya broken into a set of shorter blasts. Others say it is the tekiya broken into a series of staccato blasts. And so we compromise by using them both. The shevarim is the set of three short blasts, each at least one second long; the teru’ah is the set of 9 staccato blasts, lasting in total for at least 3 seconds.

As noted earlier, the blowing of the horn is referred to three times, in Leviticus 23:24 and 25:9, as well as in Numbers 29:1. Based on this the rabbis have declared (Sifre Numbers) that the sets of blasts should be repeated three times. Moreover, in each set of blasts there should be two tekiya blasts and one teru’ah blast. And, because we don’t know what is the proper form of the teru’ah blast, we perform each of the following sets three times:

tekiya shevarim teru’ah tekiya 

tekiya shevarim tekiya

tekiya teru’ah tekiya 

Thus we hear 30 blasts in the initial shofar ceremony. 

The full verse Numbers 10:10 is: “And on your joyous occasions — your fixed festivals and new moon days you shall sound the trumpets over your burnt offerings and your sacrifices of well-being. They shall be a reminder of you before your God: I, the Lord, am your God.” There are three sections in the Rosh Hashana musaf amida, referred to as malchuyot, zichronot, and shofrot, and all of these derive from this verse. The first of these, malchuyot, is based on the closing phrase “I, the Lord, am your G-d”. The second of these, zichronot, is based on the phrase “they shall be a reminder to you”. The third of these, shofrot, is based the command, “you shall sound the trumpets” (Note that they are not recited in the order in which they appear in Numbers 10:10; Sifre Numbers presents the reasoning for the rearrangement of the order.) Within each of these three sections the same set of 30 blasts is sounded during the repetition of the amida. Finally a set of 10 blasts is included in the closing kaddish of the musaf amida. This last set was included into the service by the Gaonim [7th thru 11th century CE]. If one were to pray in a Sefardic minyan, one would then hear 70 blasts. But the Tosafists [12th-13th century CE] added 30 more, to be blown while the congregation is engaged in the silent musaf amida, at the same points at which they are blown during the repetition of the amida. So we hear 100 blasts in total. 

The comedian Sam Levenson once referred to the shofar as “an ill wind that no one blows good.” Let us hope and pray that the sounds of the shofar this Rosh Hashana will augur good for all of Israel.